Eight Months After She Was Attacked, Petra Kvitova Surprises Herself at the U.S. Open

Petra Kvitova, the two-time Wimbledon champion, is back in contention after a knife attack that nearly ended her career.

Photograph by Andres Kudacki / AP

New York has never been the easiest place for Petra Kvitova to play. The
humid heat bothered her lungs; the surface of the courts at Flushing
Meadows was not quite to her liking; there were extra demands, swarming
sponsors, and the pressure, which the pace and noise of the city seemed
to ratchet up. It was not enough for her to win Wimbledon once, or even
twice. When you can do what Kvitova can—hit nasty kick serves, mix
velvet touch and ample power, move with sudden speed—people expect you
to win everywhere, and to answer why when you don’t.

Then, last December, she was attacked in her home. It happened while she
was having breakfast. A man came to the door of her apartment in
Prostejov, Czech Republic, and said that he was a maintenance worker from the electric company, there to check the utility box. She let him in, and he demanded five thousand koruna—about two hundred and thirty dollars.
He pulled a knife and held it to her throat.

She fought him off and he fled, but not before slashing the fingers on
her left hand. It was her playing hand. During nearly four hours of
emergency surgery in a hospital about forty miles away, doctors repaired
two damaged nerves and the tendons in every finger. Her surgeon could not
say whether she would ever be able to play tennis again.

For months, she couldn’t train. She signed up for courses at university,
preparing to face life after tennis. She underwent hours of rehab every day.
Awkwardly, she had hired a new coach, Jiri Vanek, only weeks before. “It
was kind of a difficult situation for everyone,” she said to me the
other day. “Maybe, on the other hand, it helped us, because we got to know
each other a little bit differently.” She and Vanek played other sports
when she could not hold a racket. They went sightseeing in Monaco. And
then, slowly, she began to train again.

Before the attack, at her best, Kvitova had been
among the best. She halted Serena Williams’s twenty-seven-match
winning streak, in 2016, and made it look easy. She won two Wimbledon
finals, both routs. I once watched her win a match against a top-thirty
player in thirty-six minutes. She was, by some measures, the most
aggressive player on the W.T.A. tour; when she wasn’t over-hitting, she
was almost unbeatable.

But her game was as unpredictable as it was sublime. Sometimes, instead
of “Peak Petra,” we got “P3tra,” so called for her habit of going three
sets against players she should have beaten easily. She’d set up the
perfect point, then send it two feet wide, squawking as the ball veered
off, staring at the errant mark with disbelief. She was loved by
everyone—fans, journalists, other players. How could you not love her?
No one could be kinder. In 2016, she won the Women’s Tennis
Association’s sportsmanship award for the fifth time in six years.
Still, there was a sense that she was capable of more.

Four months after the attack, she was playing on Court Philippe
Chatrier, the French Open’s main court. It was the first round. Watching
the lightning strike of her forehand, you could imagine that her career
had never been interrupted. But her tears when she won gave it away. She
lost her second-round match, but the result was irrelevant. Only a few
weeks later, she won her first title since the attack, at the Aegon
Classic. Her surgeon called it a “miracle.” Unbelievably, she entered
Wimbledon as the oddsmakers’ favorite to win the championship.

It didn’t happen. She played her second-round match, against the American
Madison Brengle, on a brutally hot day. She has never liked the heat, and
it appeared to bother her even more than usual. In between points, she
would hunch over, the head of her racket on the parched grass, her hand
on the handle as if it were a staff for support. Her face was red and
her pale hair was dark with sweat. Her steps were uncharacteristically
heavy. Brengle smartly took advantage, slicing the ball and making
Kvitova move. It was the rare loss that didn’t seem to matter, but it
was also a reminder: this will continue to be hard.

Kvitova, who is twenty-seven, is quick to say that it is “very special” to be back, that she
is grateful for the crowds, the welcome of other players, the ability to
hold a racket. Things are starting to seem “more normal.” When she takes
the court, she is just a tennis player again. But scars lace her left
hand. The man who did this to her has not been caught. The nerve damage
is lasting; she still cannot feel two of her fingers. She cannot clench
her left fist, or grip the racket as tightly as she wants to. “That’s
the way it is,” she said. “I feel O.K. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes
it’s a little bit worse, but, over all, I feel O.K.” But sometimes there
is a shot she wants to hit that she can’t make anymore. “I get
frustrated,” she admitted. She works with a mental coach, as she has for
years. They have a lot to talk about. “Every day is just different.
Every day, it feels like something new.”

In her first-round match, on Monday, she beat Jelena Jankovic, a wily
veteran, 7–5, 7–5. She finished with fifteen winners on the forehand
side alone. “I’m kind of surprised I can play the way that I played
today, to be honest,” she said afterward. In a wide-open women’s field,
she can win any match. But it seems almost beside the point to wonder.

It can be strange and uncomfortable, as a fan, to focus on tennis after
trauma. But Kvitova looks relaxed. She is staying at a hotel on the edge
of Central Park. She has found a routine that suits her. It’s good to be
here.